The Gothic-style italic capital Z resembles one of the symbols belonging to the extended Latin alphabet - Capital Letter Yogh [U:021C]. This letter was used in Middle English and Middle Scots languages which existed till the middle of the last millennium. It represented the sound [ [j]] and it was commonly found in the written sources. During the Middle Ages the Yough letter gave way to more familiar letters. If you ask Slavic language speakers, they will tell you that this symbol reminds them of the Cyrillic Z letter (which looks like this: З).

Nowadays, the Black-Letter Capital Z is one of the characters used for text decoration. This ancient letter might come in handy in articles on the history of the English language. Compare the Gothic Z with letters from other blocks of Unicode: [U:04E0], [U:0498], [U:1D585].